It was a primitive one-reeler action picture, about 10 minutes long, with 14-scenes, filmed in November 1903 - not in the western expanse of Wyoming but on the East Coast in various locales in New Jersey (at Edison's New York studio, at Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna railroad).

The film is intercut from the bandits beating up the telegraph operator (scene one) to the operator's daughter discovering her father (scene ten), to the operator's recruitment of a dance hall posse (scene eleven), to the bandits being pursued (scene twelve), and splitting up the booty and having a final shoot-out (scene thirteen).

The film also employed the first pan shots (in scenes eight and nine), and the use of an ellipsis (in scene eleven).

Compared with other British films of the period, the pacing is unusually rapid and the narrative is surprisingly sophisticated - particularly its use of a revenge motive (the policeman avenging his badly injured comrade), which viewers of just about any current action thriller will immediately recognise as a key ingredient of the genre.

was keen to make his film as visually and dramatically appealing as he could given the limitations of the basic story.

(1903), here it's just one technique among many, as the policeman is quickly substituted by a dummy as he's hurled off the roof by the burglar.

Recent research indicates that all cellulose-based film, whether it's a cellulose nitrate negative from the 1890's or a cellulose triacetate color transparency from the 1990's, share very similar deterioration mechanisms that are temperature and humidity dependent.

In 1903, this film was refined, incorporating a thicker nitrate film base and a gelatin coating on both sides.

The new films were significant improvements (ignition temperature for safety film is in the region of 800o to 1000o F as compared with 300o F for nitrate film in good condition).

Filmed from a moving boat, the film depicts the Hudson River (i.e., North River) shoreline and the piers of lower Manhattan beginning around Fulton Street and extending to Castle Garden and Battery Park.

Filmed in New York's Lower East Side, the scene is a street where several pushcart vendors have gathered to sell their goods.

The film follows a group of approximately ten men who are suspended on the cable of a large crane atop a building under construction.

(1903) by making use of similar techniques - for instance, cutting on action as characters run past the camera, using pans to convey a sense of speed and urgency - but in a much more controlled and coherent way.

That said, there is little attempt at realism - despite the rural setting, the gamekeepers seem able to summon the policemen instantly with just a casual snap of the fingers, and in narrative terms the film consists of little more than a series of chases and fights in a variety of attractive Welsh locations.

It is clear that these were the film's main attraction, as the bookending opening and closing scenes are perfunctory in the extreme, the film ending almost as soon as the poachers are finally collared by the law.

Although accomplished films continued to be made up until the end of the decade, such restrictive policies would ultimately have a severe effect on the industry's creative development.

This film -- the tale of a manipulative housemaid who seduces her master -- transgresses the laws of contemporary cinema to the same extent that its heroine tears apart the Confucian order of her household.

Told through the perspective of a young girl, the film portrays the struggles of a young widow who falls in love with her tenant, but cannot express her feelings due to a restrictive social code.

As seen in all the films made by Charlie Chaplin consisted the realistic treatment blended with the tramp’s comedy in the typical Chaplin fashion.

A dog’s life was one of the films that marked the beginning of an era of the realistic cinema.

www.shyamshah.com /Wclassics.html (456 words)

First Cut: The Great Train Robbery(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)

These 50-foot, 35mm films showed a single moving subject, photographed from camera stop to camera stop, and were spliced into a continuous loop wound around a bank of spools.

Film historian Kevin Brownlow has theorized that early filmmakers copied the stage when they began dramatizing material because they were awed by it and longed to win the respect of its upscale audiences.

The rest of the film returned to the completely played out theatrical scene tradition, but these shots suggested that a filmmaker was not necessarily tied to the time and space limitations of the stage but could move around and through the narrative in a manner closer to that of the novelist.

Although it was made at the very dawn of cinema history, this short film still has the capacity to surprise and impress a modern cinema audience.

In one of his most imaginative films, Georges Méliès shows total mastery of the special effects available to him, which still look impressive when set aside today’s state of the art computer generated graphics.

The film is in colour, a feat which was achieved by colouring each individual frame by hand.

The film's director, Edwin S. Porter, freed his camera from the confines of a studio and moved it into the outdoors.

The film's place in film history is yet another indication of the importance of the western.

Whereas The Great Train Robbery was filmed near Dover, New Jersey, Kit Carson was made in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, "amid scenery of the wildest natural beauty." Releases stated that the film was "enacted with the greatest possible fidelity to the original.

www.classicimages.com /1999/may99/kitcarson.html (1000 words)

Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery (1903)(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)

The film originated many elements which have come to be clichés in Western films.

It was the first film in which someone was forced to dance by someone else shooting at his feet, for example.

The British Film Institute's Sight and Sound Profile of Porter as a key innovator of early film.

You saw it here first: Pittsburgh's Nickelodeon introduced the moving picture theater to the masses in 1905(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)

Pittsburgh film boosters are tying Wednesday's local premiere of George A. Romero's "Land of the Dead" at the Byham Theater, Downtown, to the anniversary to bring some attention to the part the city played.

Other historical references say the first movie shown was "The Great Train Robbery," but that legendary 1903film was already so well-known (it previously had a summer-long run at Kennywood, for instance) that patrons probably would not be flooding into the Nickelodeon to see it again two years later.

The short films were just curiosities then, often called "chasers," since they were shown at the end of the live acts to drive patrons from theaters.

www.post-gazette.com /pg/05170/522854.stm (1814 words)

Edison 1903 Film Catalogue(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)

In the early days of the movie business, before conventions for advertising and reviewing movies were established, producers of films relied on sales agents and catalogues to inform distributors about their new releases.

As Charles Musser suggests, it's also likely that some exhibitors used the catalogue copy as a script that was read aloud to audiences by a live narrator/showman while the film played on the screen.

The text and illustrations are derived from the 1984 microfilm edition published by the Thomas A. Edison Papers.

Set in London in 1903 the film begins as Scottish playwright, Barrie, watches his latest play open to lukewarm reviews.

While shamefully manipulative during its latter stages, the film is so beautifully constructed and performed that you will not mind succumbing to its charms.

Depp, as ever, is on mesmerising form but he is capably supported by the likes of Winslet, Mitchell and Hoffman, not to mention young Freddie Highmore, who is something of a revelation as Peter, the quietest of Sylvia's sons and whose unspoken grief for his father has forced him to grow up too soon.

(The film technique of an ellipsis is introduced here - a leap forward in time by the omission of non-essential material.) He alerts them to the robbery that has occurred, causing an abrupt end to the dance.

The film closes with a medium shot close-up of the bandit chief (with green-tinted shirt and red-tinted kerchief in some versions) (George Barnes) with his hat pushed back on his head.

This final punch to the film was totally irrelevant to the plot.

www.filmsite.org /grea2.html (680 words)

ISKRA 1903 Buzz Soundtrack: Film Music on the Web CD Reviews May 2002(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)

This has got to be the weirdest album we have ever received at Film Music on the Web.

The film is supposed to be about a character called Buzz.

Well, this person and the film must have been grotesque in the extreme because the music to put it at its kindest sounds like instrumentalists tuning up before playing.

His Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903) was one of the very earliest "full-length" American movies -- although "full-length" in 1903 meant about 14 minutes.

The catalog that the Edison company prepared to help sell the film to exhibitors provides descriptions that help 21st century viewers "see" what is going on in each of the following scenes as those original viewers did, and so we've included the catalogue text alongside each clip.

The clips below are identified by the "announcements" used in the film.

www.iath.virginia.edu /utc/onstage/films/mv03hp.html (376 words)

Narrative Film(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)

The process of making a film in 1903 was a lot different than the process of making

they saw film as a realistic medium, and in real life no one could be at two places at once.

At around 1903 the process of making a film depended on the use of "temporal overlap".

This film is a review by automobile of the arrival parade route of President Theodore Roosevelt, on Tuesday, May 12, 1903.

The film was shot from about 2:10pm to 2:15pm (shortly before the 3pm parade) and shows street and building decorations and excited crowds.

The later portion of the route is shown in the film "Market Street Before Parade." Passing northwest up Third Street, the automobile turns northeast onto Market Street, then north onto Montgomery Street.